Afficionados of jazz may be in no doubt about the soothing qualities of the music, but booming CD sales and sell-out concerts sponsored by heavyweight brands suggest that jazz means business too.

About 7,000 people - young and old - have been attending concerts, films and lectures at Dublin Jazz Week in some of the city's most fashionable venues since Monday. The profile of the music, long thought of as the preserve of a small group of middle-aged men who people dusty clubs, has clearly changed.

The festival was organised by Improvised Music Company, which was founded in 1991 as a lobby group to support the development of jazz. Backed by the Arts Council, the company has since evolved into a concert promoting agency, recording firm and festival organiser.

"The audience demographic of jazz is seen as unwieldy from a marketing point of view - you might have 15-year-olds with their tongues pierced sitting beside a TD - but I think that's its great strength," says Improvised Music Company director, Mr Gerry Godley.

According to the manager of Tower Records in central Dublin, Mr Stevo Berube, sales of jazz CDs are growing faster than all other forms of music.

"The core demographic would have been 45-55 male, but since the arrival of acid jazz [in the early 1990s] this has reduced so that the average jazz customer would be 25-30. It's a complete turnaround."

Mr Ben Jackson, a concert promoter who has brought many international stars to Dublin since he graduated from TCD two years ago, agrees. "Jazz was seen as an old man's music, but now the appeal is very broad. It's following a European trend. In every other European country jazz is seen as young and hip. It's seen as discerning, hip, innovative and world-class."

Having spent much of this year working on a series of six major concerts with high-profile performers such as the American pianist Brad Mehldau and singer Jimmy Scott, Mr Jackson says sponsors are keen to be associated with the music. "The series doesn't just appeal to consumers, but to potential sponsors as well and to brand values above all. The idea is that the quality of the events will lend a perception of quality to the product associated with it."

In addition to main sponsor Miller Genuine Draft, Mr Jackson has secured support from the Radisson SAS St Helen's Hotel, Lyric FM and The Irish Times. The latter two, among others, are also backing Dublin Jazz Week, although the principal support is provided by the ESB. While Mr Godley declines to reveal how much the ESB put into the festival, he says the company has made a heavy investment.

"In arts sponsorship terms, it's a very significant amount of money. The ideological implications for jazz of having a serious blue-chip State utility communicates a very powerful message about the status of the music in Ireland.

"The net effect of being driven out of pop culture [in the 1960s] is that it's become a thriving subculture," says Mr Godley. "It has existed in a very uncorrupted sort of way and one of the reasons [behind the current renaissance] is that the very strong values of integrity associated with the culture are attractive to people."

Mr Berube says much of the new interest in the music can be attributed to pop bands such as US3 and M People who incorporated jazz sounds into their music in the early 1990s. Moreover, RTE producer and long-time jazzman Mr Noel Kelehan cites the economic boom and the development of new venues as helping the growth of jazz. "Promoters are able to afford to bring in big names and people can afford to go to them. The local scene is picking up too."

While Mr Godley acknowledges that the "grand-daddy" jazz festival is the Guinness-sponsored event in Cork every October, he is keen to see the Dublin festival become firmly established on the calendar between the Temple Bar Blues festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival.

As in all business ventures, it's the money that counts. With many jazz musicians travelling from the US for concerts in Ireland, currency movements can prove difficult for operators with restricted budgets such as Mr Godley. "The implications of the euro's performance against the dollar have been very grave. I have been watching Alan Greenspan's activities very closely."